I have often felt that other people have found their faith,
the path to follow and the guru to guide them. In that belief I have felt lost
not knowing what or whom to follow or how to worship. And I have been searching
for the right approach.
Today I had a revelation that even though I do not know or
have identified the path to follow, some higher power has always been guiding
me in the right direction all my life. Only last week I read somewhere that the
best way to pray to God is to ask him to show you the right path. I got
it.
Of course you have always been following the right direction all your life! How could it be otherwise? Carl Gustav Jung wrote: "The fact that many a woman who goes her own way ends in ruin means nothing. She must obey her own law, as if it were a demon whispering to her of new and wonderful paths ... The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realisation - absolute and unconditional - of its own particular law ... To the extent that a woman is untrue to the law of her being, she has failed to realise her life's meaning."
ReplyDeleteIn your revelation you speak of "the path" and "the right direction" as if there was only one (or at least one per person). Are not all paths or directions equally "right" if they feel right? If my path feels right every step of the way yet I end up in bankruptcy, prison or even the gallows is that an indication that I was on the wrong path? I may be restating Rajan's comment here. Buddah started out life as a prince and died a beggar. Mohammed (peace be upon him) was born a beggar yet died a general whose army conquered Mecca and Medina. Jesus was born in a stable and executed as a common criminal so clearly he displayed no aptitude whatsoever. An author once wrote that he resolved to break his New Year's resolutions as quickly as possible that way he could achieve "success" even in "failure." Perhaps it is your belief that you are on the right path which is the thing of value rather than faith in a particular path or a guru. The philosopher Alfred Korzybski summarized the idea that we can not know reality we can only know our perceptions of reality in his famous statement "the map is not the territory." If faith is a prerequisite for spiritual enlightenment I suspect that there are those like me who will be forever excluded. I think that even if I were to somehow arrive at the pearly gates of heaven I would challenge St. Peter to prove his existence to me empirically (or at least deductively) and convince me that my perception of him is not in fact a figment of my fevered imagination undergoing the trauma of death. I consider myself an adherent of Amida Buddhism (probably because it requires so little effort) and because after I say "Namu Amida Butsu" even once in a million million lifetimes, with or without any faith whatsoever, my salvation is guaranteed. I suspect that even this requirement could be waived for those of us for which this is too much of a commitment.
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